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For some people it might seem gross, avoid reading if so.

I want to ask about the mobility of a snail centaur, basically part torso with arms and the lower part of a snail and a huge shell.

Could it perhaps climb onto trees and mountains by sticking onto walls, and could it crawl or would it be crushed by its own weight?

Imagine it being size of panda bear.

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    $\begingroup$ Square cubed law. Wouldn't be able to climb up trees the way a normal snail can. $\endgroup$
    – DKNguyen
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 23:37
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    $\begingroup$ Big molluscs work in water because their bodies have almost the same density as water, and thus they are almost weightless. Big molluscs don't work on land, because their own weight would squish them. Practical experience: find a snail and imagine what would happen to if you were to step on it. Would it retain its structural integrity? $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 23:54
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    $\begingroup$ Might work if its body were wide, long and very very flat. Giving it the relative proportions and size of a panda seems impractical. $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Commented Jan 1, 2021 at 5:16

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The biggest issue you are going to face is dehydration. Snails and slugs move about on a mucus trail they make with their own bodily fluids, and that takes a lot of water out of them. That's the reason you usually find slugs and snails in wet places, and the largest slugs are all in extremely wet areas like the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest or humid, subtropical areas of central Africa. The bigger you get, the more slime you have to produce because the surface area of your foot increases quadratically.

On top of that, while your foot area is going to increase quadratically, your body weight is going to increase cubically, and this might cause issues in that you are getting a disproportionate amount of force pushing down as you get larger, and that might outweigh any benefits you get from reduced friction from slime. At some point the sheer mass of the animal will make slime travel inefficient.

The best way to get around this would be to make the snailtaurs more reptilian. Get rid of their mucus and slime locomotion and make them more more like a python or large snake by rectilinear locomotion. It may not be perfect because large snakes like pythons and boas are pretty sluggish, but if Titanoboa can get away with being a T. rex-sized snake your snailtaurs should be fine.

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